Artist interpretation of a normal Brent Wheat fishing trip

Some days, it’s just better to stay in bed with the covers over your face than to stride boldly into the world just to be beaten viciously about the head and neck by fate. This applies doubly if you have been invited to go fishing with me.

Our tale today is another “Me and Sam” story. Both regular readers will remember my buddy Sam, a long-time fishing and hunting partner. You might also remember our other friends, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, who join us whenever we head out together for a day.

Sam and I could be likened to nuclear fission: two elements that, separately, are relatively stable. However, when we are placed together and in proximity to fishing rods, shotguns or camping gear, bad things begin to happen rapidly and meltdown is a distinct possibility

The setting for the week’s current debacle is a northern Indiana reservoir that will remain nameless to protect the guilty. We loaded up and pulled out at first light on a clear morning, anxious to fill the livewell with our favorite quarry of the moment, tasty white bass. If you weren’t aware, white bass are currently so ravenous and eager to hit anything that they sometimes jump into the back seat of your car when you stop for traffic signals near the lake.

Much ink has been spilled in this corner about my boat and it’s motor. While the hull is only three years old, the motor is older than both my children combined but has been well cared for. Like any old fisherman it has good and bad days but it seems that our outings always coincide with the bad.

Two weeks ago, I discussed the first boat trip of the season with its attendant massive fuel spill and mid-stream mechanical work, then last week detailed how I broke a favored fishing rod during a dumb boating stunt. As they say, the third time is a charm. This week’s trip was certainly charming, especially if you consider Steven King novels to be light comedy.

We arrived at the lake and put in at a favored public access ramp where the lake and its tributary river meet. The motor started on a single turn of the key and we putted upstream.

After two hours of mediocre success, we decided to venture down into the lake proper and visit a deep point I had located a week earlier with the depth finder and was virtually teeming with large schools of fish or clams or something.

Running far down the lake as the motor performed flawlessly, we enjoyed launching off the wakes of the few boats that passed. Upon our arrival at the fishing area, I throttled down and we slid off plane to settle at trolling speed.

Letting out the lines, we trolled across the point and I noted that the schools of fish were still present. At that same time, both our lines began thumping and we were on to a brace of decent-sized white bass. Things were looking good. In retrospect I should have remembered that anytime life starts going so well it is a warning sign more vivid than a marine flare.

Just as we lowered our lines in the water again, the motor sputtered and made a noise identical to that of a dog with something caught in its throat. I immediately looked behind the boat for a wad of coughed-up hair or grass but there was none. There was also no engine noise.

To make a long, sad story shorter, I learned a few lessons that day:

Lesson number 1- A lake full of boats will suddenly become more desolate than the middle of the Sahara desert when your motor conks out.

Lesson number 2- Do not carry a cellular phone while on the water. If you do make contact with the outside world, for instance a spouse, laughter is terribly demeaning while you are paddling with a baseball cap and a minnow bucket.

Lesson number 3- A large trolling motor battery will only take your boat about 3 miles at the high speed setting. This presents a problem when the ramp is 10 miles away.

Lesson number 4- Bad luck happens in spades. For example, what are the odds that during the middle of a boating crisis, your digital pager would fall out of a zippered pocket, bounce from your hands three times then rapidly sink with a very terminal-sounding ‘Ker-Plunk’? On a positive note, such horseplay does help to briefly lift the spirits of your fellow castaway.

Lesson number 5- The conservation officers really get a good chuckle over stranded boaters; perhaps too much.

Lesson number 6- If you stop and think about it, the plight of the S.S. Minnow wasn’t really all that funny.

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